This thesis presents an engineering project measuring the effective wavelength of the CHARA Classic beam combiner on the CHARA Array. Knowing the actual effective wavelength of light observed is very important because that value is necessary for determining astrophysical parameters of stars. Currently, the value used for CHARA Classic data comes from a model of the system and is based on numbers published by the manufacturer of the filter; it is not derived from measurements done on the system directly. We use two data collection methods to observe standard stars of different spectral types and calculate the wavelength of light recorded by the instrument for each star. We find the best estimate of the effective wavelength for the CHARA Classic K′-band configuration to be 2.138±0.003μm, a 0.56% decrease from the previously adopted value of 2.150μm. Our result establishes the first estimate of the uncertainty in the effective wavelength.

A long-baseline (LBL) underwater acoustic communication and localization system was developed for the Virginia Tech Underwater Glider (VTUG). Autonomous underwater vehicles, much like terrestrial and aerial robots require an effective positioning system, like GPS to perform a wide variety of guidance, navigation and control operations. Sea and freshwater attenuate electromagnetic waves (sea water is worse due to higher conductivity) within very few meters of striking the water surface. Since radio frequency communications are unavailable, many undersea systems use acoustic communications instead. Underwater acoustic communication is the technique of sending and receiving data below water. Underwater acoustic positioning is the technique of locating an underwater object. Among the various types of acoustic positioning systems, the LBL acoustic positioning method offers the highest accuracy for underwater vehicle navigation. A system consisting of three acoustic 'beacons which are placed on the surface of the water at known locations was developed. Using an acoustic modem to excite an acoustic transducer to send sound waves from an underwater glider, the range measurements to each of the beacons was calculated. These range measurements along with data from the attitude heading and reference system (AHRS) on board the glider were used to estimate the position of the underwater vehicle. Static and dynamic estimators were implemented. The system also allowed for underwater acoustic communication in the form of heartbeat messages from the glider, which were used to monitor the health of the vehicle. / Master of Science

Le projet DUNE est un projet d’expérience d’oscillations de neutrinos sur faisceau longue-distance, dédié en particulier à la détermination de la hiérarchie de masse des neutrinos et à la mesure de la phase de violation CP intervenant dans le mécanisme d’oscillations. Ce projet consiste en un faisceau intense de neutrinos de 1300 km et un détecteur massif contenant plus de 40 kilotonnes d’argon liquide, basé sur la technologie des chambres à dérive à argon liquide (LArTPC). Deux approches de cette technologie sont actuellement en développement, menant à l'installation au CERN de deux prototypes dont la construction devrait s'achever fin 2018. Le travail présenté dans cette thèse s’intègre dans le cadre du projet ProtoDUNE-DP, qui vise à prouver la faisabilité de la technologie dite « double-phase », c’est-à-dire utilisant de l'argon liquide et gazeux, pour les LArTPC de cette envergure. Deux signaux principaux sont attendus dans un tel détecteur, un signal de charges et un signal lumineux de scintillation. Le signal lumineux peut être utilisé dans le système de déclenchement d'acquisition des données, dans l’identification et éventuellement la réjection du signal dû aux muons cosmiques, et pour des mesures calorimétriques de précision. Des simulations préalables de ce signal sont donc nécessaires afin d'en comprendre les particularités et de développer des algorithmes d'identification. Cette thèse porte en particulier sur le développement de cette simulation et sur l’étude de la propagation des photons de scintillation au sein du détecteur. Les différents mécanismes de production de la lumière de scintillation, la simulation développée au cours de cette thèse et les études réalisées sur la propagation de la lumière de scintillation dans ProtoDUNE-DP seront présentés. Ces simulations ont également pu être comparées aux données recueillies avec un pré-prototype double-phase installé au CERN en 2017, afin de tester la validité de la simulation et d’en améliorer les différents paramètres. / DUNE is a future long-baseline neutrino experiment designed to determine, among others, the neutrino mass hierarchy and to measure the CP violation phase that enters the neutrino oscillation process. This project is based on a 1300 km long high intensity neutrino beam and a massive detector containing more than 40 kilotons of liquid argon using the liquid argon time projection chamber technology (LArTPC). Two approaches of this technology are currently under development, leading to the construction of two prototypes to be in place at the end of 2018 at CERN. The work of this thesis is part of the ProtoDUNE-DP project, which aims at probing the capabilities of the so-called “dual-phase” technology, that uses both gaseous and liquid argon, for a large-scale detector. Two kind of signals, a charge signal and a scintillation light signal, are expected in a LArTPC. The light signal can be used as a trigger, for the identification and rejection of the cosmic background, and for precise calorimetric measurements. Prior simulations of this signal are needed in order to improve our understanding of the scintillation light signal and to develop the identification algorithms. This work addresses the development of this simulation and the study of the scintillation photon behavior in the liquid argon detector. The different scintillation light production mechanisms, the developed simulation and the different studies on the light propagation in ProtoDUNE-DP are presented. These simulations have also been compared with light data taken at CERN in 2017 with a first demonstrator, in order to validate and tune the simulation.

I present the results of a comprehensive assessment of companions to 454 solar-type stars within 25 pc. New observational aspects of this work include surveys for (1) very close companions with long-baseline interferometry at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array, (2) close companions with speckle interferometry, and (3) wide proper motion companions identified by blinking multi-epoch archival images. I have also obtained and included unpublished results from extensive radial velocity monitoring programs. The many sources utilized enable a thorough evaluation of stellar and brown dwarf companions. The results presented here include eight new companion discoveries, four of which are wide common proper motion pairs discovered by blinking archival images, and four more are from the spectroscopic data. The overall observed fractions of single, double, triple, and higher order systems are 57%±3%, 33%±2%, 8%±1%, and 3%±1%, respectively, counting all stellar and brown dwarf companions. The incompleteness analysis indicates that only a few undiscovered companions remain in this well-studied sample, showing that a majority of the solar-type stars are single. Bluer, more massive stars are more likely to have companions than redder, less massive ones. I confirm earlier expectations that more active stars are more likely to have companions. A preliminary, but important indication is that brown dwarfs, like planets, prefer stars with higher metallicity, tentatively suggesting that brown dwarfs may form like planets when they are companions to stars. The period distribution is unimodal and roughly Gaussian with peak and median values of about 300 years. The period-eccentricity relation shows a roughly flat distribution beyond the circularization limit of about 12 days. The mass-ratio distribution shows a clear discontinuity near a value of one, indicating a preference for twins, which are not confined to short orbital periods, suggesting that stars form by multiple formation mechanisms. The ratio of planet hosts among single, binary, and multiple systems are statistically indistinguishable, suggesting that planets are as likely to form around single stars as they are around components of binary or multiple systems at sufficiently wide separations.

A considerable number of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) surveys have been conducted in the northern hemisphere and very few in the southern hemisphere mostly because of a lack of telescopes and therefore adequate baseline coverage. Thus there is a deficit of calibrator sources in the southern hemisphere. Further, some of the most interesting astronomical objects eg. the galactic centre and the nearest galaxies (the small and large Magellanic Clouds) lie in the southern hemisphere and these require high resolution studies. With a major expansion of radio astronomy observing capability on its way in the southern hemisphere (with the two SKA (Square Kilometre Array) precursors, meerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope) and ASKAP (Australian SKA Pathfinder), leading to the SKA itself) it is clear that interferometry and VLBI in the southern hemisphere need a dense network of calibration sources at different resolutions and a range of frequencies. This work seeks to help redress this problem by presenting an analysis of 31 southern sources to help fill the gaps in the southern hemisphere calibrator distribution. We have developed a multi-parameter method of classifying these sources as calibrators. From our sample of 31 sources, we have 2 class A sources (Excellent calibrators), 16 class B sources (Good calibrators), 9 class C sources (Poor calibrators) and 4 class D sources (Unsuitable calibrators).

The mildly active nuclear region in the galaxy M81 (henceforth, M81‹) is one of the nearest low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGN) whose structure is marginally resolved when probed with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). Motivated by the way resolved radio sources usually appear on the smallest scales, i.e., a core with a one- sided jet structure, we developed a strictly one-sided, asymmetric triangular model, which we call ASYM, with brightness distribution along a line segment on the sky, with maximum brightness at one end of the segment fading linearly to zero at the other end. The ASYM model is compared and contrasted with an elliptical Gaussian model (hereafter, GAUS), by fitting existing VLBI data of M81‹ at 39 epochs between 1993 and 2003 at 8.4 and 5.0 GHz with the two models. Contrary to what we envisioned, we find that for 77% of our epochs, a simple GAUS model fits the visibility data of M81‹ at 8.4 GHz better (i.e., has a lower reduced 2) than the ASYM model. We conclude that M81‹ is not strictly a one-sided, asymmetric jetted source; as is thought to be the case for the majority of AGN observed at VLBI scales. Our results imply that M81‹ is mostly symmetrical with a significant jet counterpart which cannot be overlooked. / School of Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Studies (SIRGS) / M. Sc. (Astronomy)

Submitted by Marta Toyoda (1144061@mackenzie.br) on 2018-02-16T23:06:29Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Roberto Vitoriano Perianhes.pdf: 5483045 bytes, checksum: 54cb8ad49fe9a8dd9da3aaabb8076b2f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Paola Damato (repositorio@mackenzie.br) on 2018-03-08T11:19:18Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Roberto Vitoriano Perianhes.pdf: 5483045 bytes, checksum: 54cb8ad49fe9a8dd9da3aaabb8076b2f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-08T11:19:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Roberto Vitoriano Perianhes.pdf: 5483045 bytes, checksum: 54cb8ad49fe9a8dd9da3aaabb8076b2f (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The images obtained by interferometers such as VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) and VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry), remain the direct evidence of relativistic jets and outbursts associated with supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). The study of these images are critical tools to the use of information from these observations, since they are one of the main ingredients for synthesis codes7 of extragalactic objects. In this thesis is used both synthetic and observed images. The VLBA images show 2-dimensional observations generated from complex 3-dimensional astrophysical processes. In this sense, one of the main difficulties of the models is the definition of parameters of functions and equations to reproduce macroscopic and dynamic physical formation events of these objects, so that images could be study reliably and on a large scale. One of the goals of this thesis is to elaborate a generic8 form of observations, assuming that the formation of these objects had origin directly by similar astrophysical processes, given the information of certain parameters of the formation events. The definition of parameters that reproduce the observations are key to the generalization formation of sources and extragalactic jets. Most observation articles have focus on few or even unique objects. The purpose of this project is to implement an innovative method, more robust and efficient, for modeling and rendering projects of various objects, such as the MOJAVE Project, which monitors several quasars simultaneously offering a diverse library for creating models (Quasars9 and Blazars10: OVV11 and BL Lacertae12). In this thesis was implemented a dynamic way to study these objects. Presents in this thesis the adaptation of the Cross-Entropy algorithm for the calibration of the parameters of astrophysical events that summarize the actual events of the VLBA observations. The development of the code of the adaptation structure includes the possibility of extension to any image, assuming that these images are dispose in intensities (Jy/beam) distributed in Right Ascension (AR) and Declination (DEC) maps. The code is validating by searching for self-convergence to synthetic models with the same structure, i.e, realistics simulations of components ejection, in milliarcsecond, similar to the observations of the MOJAVE project in 15.3 GHz. With the use of the parameters major semi-axis, angle of position, eccentricity and intensity applied individually to each observed component, it was possible to calculate the structure of the sources, the velocities of the jets, as well as the conversion in flux density to obtain light curves. Through the light curve, the brightness temperature, the Doppler factor, the Lorentz factor and the observation angle of the extragalactic objects can be estimated with precision. The objects OJ 287, 4C +15.05, 3C 279 and 4C +29.45 are studied in this thesis due the fact that they have different and complex morphologies for a more complete study. / As imagens obtidas por interferômetros, tais como VLBA (Very Long Baseline Array) e VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry), são evidências diretas de jatos relativísticos associados a buracos negros supermassivos em núcleos ativos de galáxias (AGN). O estudo dessas imagens é fundamental para o aproveitamento das informações dessas observações, já que é um dos principais ingredientes para os códigos de síntese1 de objetos extragalácticos. Utiliza-se nesta tese, tanto imagens sintéticas quanto observadas. As imagens de VLBA mostram observações em 2 dimensões de processos astrofísicos complexos ocorrendo em 3 dimensões. Nesse sentido, uma das principais dificuldades dos modelos é a definição dos parâmetros das funções e equações que reproduzam de forma macroscópica e dinâmica os eventos físicos de formação desses objetos, para que as imagens sejam estudadas de forma confiável e em grande escala. Um dos objetivos desta tese é elaborar uma forma genérica2 de observações, supondo que a formação desses objetos é originada por processos astrofísicos similares, com a informação de determinados parâmetros da formação dos eventos. A definição de parâmetros que reproduzam as observações são elementos chave para a generalização da formação de componentes em jatos extragalácticos. Grande parte dos artigos de observação são voltados para poucos ou únicos objetos. Foi realizada nesta tese a implementação um método inovador, robusto e eficiente para a modelagem e reprodução de vários objetos, como por exemplo nas fontes do Projeto MOJAVE, que monitora diversos quasares simultaneamente, oferecendo uma biblioteca diversificada para a criação de modelos (Quasares3 e Blazares4: OVV5 e BL Lacertae6). Com essas fontes implementou-se uma forma dinâmica para o estudo desses objetos. Apresenta-se, nesta tese, a adaptação do algoritmo de Cross-Entropy para a calibração dos parâmetros dos eventos astrofísicos que sintetizem os eventos reais das observações em VLBA. O desenvolvimento da estrutura de adaptação do código incluiu a possibilidade de extensão para qualquer imagem, supondo que as mesmas estão dispostas em intensidades (Jy/beam) distribuídas em mapas de Ascensão Reta (AR) e Declinação (DEC). A validação do código foi feita buscando a auto convergência para modelos sintéticos com as mesmas estruturas, ou seja, de simulações realísticas de ejeção de componentes, em milissegundos de arco, similares às observações do projeto MOJAVE, em 15,3 GHz. Com a utilização dos parâmetros semieixo maior, ângulo de posição, excentricidade e intensidade aplicados individualmente a cada componente observada, é possível calcular a estrutura das fontes, as velocidades dos jatos, bem como a conversão em densidade de fluxo para obtenção de curvas de luz. Através da curva de luz estimou-se com precisão a temperatura de brilhância, o fator Doppler, o fator de Lorentz e o ângulo de observação dos objetos extragalácticos. Os objetos OJ 287, 4C +15.05, 3C 279 e 4C +29.45 são estudados nesta tese pois têm morfologias diferentes e complexas para um estudo mais completo.